In the United Kingdom, domestic water meters are typically mounted at the bottom of a vertically extending, generally cylindrical, plastics housing, disposed in a pit in the ground just outside the house or other premises whose water supply is being metered. Access to the housing is obtained via a top-mounted lid, known as a pit lid. The lid is generally made of plastic, into which is moulded a metal plate, which serves as an aid to locating the pit in undergrowth or snow by means of a metal detector.
It has been proposed that such water meters should be provided with a radio transmitter for transmitting their readings to a remote receiver, which may for example be a fixed receiver positioned to receive transmissions from water meters within, say, a 500 meter radius, or a mobile receiver carried by a vehicle which periodically drives past the houses or other premises where the meters are located. The transmitters may each be equipped with a simple receiver, which serves to trigger the operation of its transmitter, eg in response to a "wake-up" signal transmitted by the aforementioned vehicle. However, existing remote meter reading systems of these kinds have a limited operating range due to poor antenna performance.